Bright Side of Life
by DannyRoranicus44
Summary: Grace had always told Dan to look on the bright side of life but after receiving news of Grace's death, he's not so sure he can.


**So I had this one line of a song in my head for a bit and it gave me this idea.**

**Not sure how IC the characters will be though! **

**(I appreciate reviews! *cough* hint, hint *cough* No, really it's up to you but I appreciate people taking the time to comment on my writing.)**

**Summary: Grace had always told Dan to look on the bright side of life but after receiving news of Grace's death, he's not so sure he can.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own the 39 Clues.**

Bright Side of Life

Dan sat in his bedroom, looking through his baseball cards for the fifth time that day. It was just a normal, boring Wednesday that Dan spent moping around the apartment in boredom. He had tried to persuade Amy to do something with him but she had just shooed him away without even looking up from her book.

Dan was already ready for the weekend. He had been bored for the previous two weeks and couldn't wait to visit Grace to continue to explore the woods. The place was massive and he was sure there were a bunch of ninjas living there, just waiting for him to stumble upon them. For now, this was only a theory but Dan was sure he was going to prove it sometime soon.

_Buzz! _Dan jumped to his feet when he heard the familiar sound of the apartment doorbell. He finally had something to do! Even if it only lasted a few seconds. As he hurried to the door, he tried to think of who would visit them on a Wednesday evening. He pulled the door open and his heart sank when he saw her: Aunt Beatrice.

What was she doing there? She tried to keep as far away from them as possible most of the time, even hiring an au pair to look after them because she didn't want to move from her block of apartments, which she claimed didn't allow children there, to look after Amy and Dan. Dan, however, had never heard of an apartment that didn't allow children before this and he was pretty sure it was all an excuse to get out of looking after them all the time.

Dan jumped out of the doorway, not wanting to get in Aunt Beatrice's way. She already looked pretty irritated. Dan searched his brain but couldn't find anything he'd done recently that she may have come to lecture him about. There was that incident when he had accidently let cockroaches escape all over the Science lab but that was before they had broken up from school and Dan was certain that if she was going to find out about that, she would have already been told. Dan had already assured himself he had got off lightly after that incident. "Where's Amy?" Aunt Beatrice asked Dan, barely looking at him as she sat down on the sofa.

"In her room," Dan replied, deciding against telling Aunt Beatrice that she was reading. The amount of reading Amy did always seemed to irritate her although Dan couldn't understand why it would. She wasn't the one who Amy ignored most of the day and Aunt Beatrice was never around. Dan was just about to offer to go and fetch her when Amy's bedroom door opened and she appeared in the doorway, sending a questioning look Dan's way as if she expected him to know the reason for Aunt Beatrice's unexplained arrival. Aunt Beatrice glanced over her shoulder when she heard Amy's door shut. She couldn't have seen Amy from the angle she glanced at but Dan guessed that she had assumed that Amy had appeared.

"You both know that Grace has been ill," Aunt Beatrice begun and Dan felt his stomach lurch. Of course he knew, he just preferred not to talk about it. He and Amy had spent the last weekend in the apartment rather than at the mansion because Grace's condition had grew worse. Every night, Dan had to persuade himself and Amy that Grace would be back to herself soon enough but from Aunt Beatrice's body language and tone, Dan could tell this wasn't the case. "She's dead. The funeral's in two days. I'll be picking you up and accompanying you there." Aunt Beatrice stood up suddenly and left the apartment, without even stopping to make sure Amy and Dan were okay, let alone see their reactions. Aunt Beatrice had spoken so quickly that Dan hadn't been able to register what she had said until after she had left.

He couldn't believe it was happening. He knew it would in the end but not this soon. It was too soon. He slumped down onto the settee and placed his head in his hands. He'd probably never come across the ninjas waiting for him in the Cahill Mansion's forest but the thing that put him down the most was that he wouldn't see Grace again. She hadn't treated him like a child, as everyone else did, she treated him as if he was an adult but now she was gone and everyone would continue to treat him like a child.

He tried to remember what Grace had always said to him. Ever since she had fallen ill, whenever they were parting, she would always tell him that one thing. Something about looking on the bright side of life. He refused to do this now. Without Grace there was no bright side of life. There was just a life stuck living in a dingy apartment with a new au pair every week and no one to care for himself or Amy. Where was the bright side of that? In two days' time, he wouldn't just be saying goodbye to Grace but to the bright side of life too.


End file.
